


(nothing but) ocean

by skai_heda



Series: The 100 AUs [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellamy Has Feelings, Clarke Griffin Deserves Better, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Endgame Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, F/M, Fear, Heavy Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Minor Bellamy Blake/Echo, Ocean, One Shot, Season/Series 06 Speculation, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:34:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17750390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skai_heda/pseuds/skai_heda
Summary: Clarke's afraid of the ocean.





	(nothing but) ocean

**Author's Note:**

> just a little one-shot that popped into my head for season six. Note: this has nothing to do with any of the season 6 spec fics on my account. Also: this does contain thoughts and an attempt of suicide, so be warned

She doesn't understand why she returns.

There is something alluring about it, the steep faces of the mountains and cliffs that are submerged by the water glowing with an ethereal blue glow.

She can handle the ocean by day; the sun is out, the waters are as blue as she saw in the movies back on the Ark.

But at night, they're just roiling black sheets that stretch out for miles and miles.

So of course, she starts to come every single night.

She doesn't necessarily have anything to worry about; no war to fight, no enemy to take down.

Octavia silently disappeared from the top of Wonkru's ranks as Wonkru made peace with Russell's settlement.

Bellamy slipped farther and farther away, until Spacekru and her friendship with them was nothing more than a distant,  _distant_ memory.

And of course, for some time, Madi needed time to adjust to the Flame, and by the time it was all said and done, Clarke could see Madi didn't need her anymore.

So Clarke's alone.

Again and again and again.

The cycle never ends.

She wishes Monty and Harper were here; at least they wouldn't have forgotten about her.

Clarke Griffin, wallowing in self-pity?

She scoffs and then she shivers.

She stands on the sandy beach.

She could be focusing on the glowing blue, but her eyes are glued to the black abyss stretching out in front of her.

It takes her a while to realize that she's paralyzed.

With fear.

She tries to take deep steadying breaths.

She imagines Bellamy is by her side, calmly putting her back together.

_Breathe in, breathe out. Do it with me, Clarke. In. Out._

What if she just drowned one day?

What if the blackness took her and all her secrets?

Stole all her breath and wore her down into pieces?

Clarke imagines herself right in the middle of the ocean, her lips turning blue and her body shaking as the air runs out and her fingers are trembling and the current carries her and she sinks and sinks and sinks and sinks and sinks-

She realizes that's she's been breathing raggedly as if she really was in the water. Choked inhales, shaky exhales, giving way to hyperventilation.

She falls to her knees.

It's so dark.

Even the stars cannot light the dark surface ahead of her.

Her fingers curl in the sand. There's no doubt that she will have grains of it underneath her fingernails for days.

If she can force herself back to her feet.

If she can keep herself from plunging into the ocean.

Where it will drag her and all her mistakes down to the ground.

She shudders.

It's so real.

So terrifyingly real.

She's afraid, but for one tantalizing second, she's leaning forward, ready to run into the water.

She could do it.

No one would even know.

And when they did, they wouldn't particularly care.

She's no one.

So would it really matter if she let go?

If she did it, would she regret it?

Would she open her eyes beneath the surface only to see an infinite void?

She can picture it so clearly now.

She would open her mouth to scream.

She'd watch as a plume of bubbles drifts up in front of her.

And then she'd try to breathe.

And water would fill her lungs and she'd lift her arm, her fingers would be stretching, trying to touch a surface she would never reach-

That would just be the survival instinct, maybe.

Deep down, she knows she wants it.

She's on her knees, trying to stand up, but her palms hit the ground in front of her, the sand cutting into her skin like glass.

_Breathe._

_I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to-_

_Breathe._

Clarke gasps erratically at the salty air.

If she was braver, she'd do it.

She'd walk right into the water.

This is the first night she feels truly afraid, truly afraid of the ocean and truly afraid of the darkness that lies dormant inside her.

It must be stopped.

She must be stopped.

She must stop.

Clarke starts to crawl towards the water.

_If you can't walk, then crawl._

Her fingers touch the icy water.

A vivid image of her fingers reaching for the surface while she suffocates underwater returns to her head.

 _Stop trying to scare me,_ she tells herself.

She was scared, that hot afternoon after Praimfaya.

She had the gun against her head, but she was scared.

She won't be scared anymore.

She rises to her feet.

She walks.

The water is up to her knees now.

_Stop trying to scare me._

"Clarke!" someone calls. It sounds like Bellamy.

No.

She can't afford to listen.

_Stop trying to scare me._

She's up to her knees in the water.

She trips over something on the sandy floor and stumbles, a sharp rock beside her slicing her arm open as she falls.

_Stop trying to scare me._

It's like the very ocean is trying to warn her, telling her to go back.

The ocean is like a series of bruises.

Black and blue.

Echo punched her in the cheekbone a couple days ago, still angry about the incident in Polis. Naturally, people had asked questions about how it happened when they saw the bruise.

Clarke just told them that she fell.

Even when Echo wasn’t witnessing her telling this lie, she could feel her icy eyes watching her every move.

The cold water soothes her cut.

She hears her name being called again, still distant, but a little closer.

_Just forget it._

_Stop trying to scare me._

She wades in a little deeper, the cold water rising up to her chest.

She’s only wearing an Eligius issued tank top under her jacket, so the water soaks her to the bones.

The waves are stronger here; it’s easier to be carried away, pulled down under.

She starts to swim.

Treading the water, she realizes at some point that there's more than ten feet between her and the bottom of the ocean.

She swims farther out.

Clarke won’t be scared this time.

Nothing bothering to take a breath, she forces her head underwater.

It happens almost immediately, her struggle to stay alive, but Clarke tries to resist. Tries not to shoot up to the surface, tries to breathe in the water.

She isn’t scared anymore.

She can’t breathe and she wants to breathe but at the same time she really doesn’t.

It’s getting dark, too dark to see.

Dark, darkness rising up in front of her, and not just the darkness of the water.

She’s losing consciousness.

_Stop trying to scare me-_

Clarke’s eyes close, and she just _sinks._

* * *

She’s never been happier than when she finally wakes again.

Because at least now, it’s over.

She’ll find Dad and Wells and Finn and Lexa and Harper and Monty.

But then she hears it.

Waves.

And then she smells it.

Salt.

The ocean.

A cool breeze ruffling through her hair.

Her wet hair.

Hands pushing her chest.

“Sixteen, seventeen, breathe, Clarke, breathe-”

She exhales sharply, gulps down the sweet air returning to her brain and to her lungs. Clarke rolls onto her side, water exploding from her mouth. Once she’s coughed the last of it out, she collapses, her eyes opening.

Brown eyes and gold skin-

It might be Raven, maybe her mother, maybe some Wonkru woman.

But- not.

His wet curls are matted to his forehead, droplets of water slowly tracing their own paths down and around his freckles. His shirt is plastered to him from the water, and Clarke dimly wonders how cold he must be.

Bellamy’s jaw is smooth; he shaved.

Is he dead, too?

Is that why he’s here?

"For  _fuck's_ sake!" he gasps, and he looks like he's been sobbing. "What the hell were you thinking?"

Clarke presses a hand to her heart.

Her beating heart.

_No, no, no, no, no-_

No.

Can’t be.

She refuses to believe that she’s still alive, so she relaxes a little.

“What were _you_ thinking?” she asks, but Bellamy slides out of her focus and she just looks at the stars.

Nothing hurts; she must be dead.

“What do you mean?” he snaps.

“Getting yourself killed,” Clarke murmurs, her eyes closing again. “You could’ve lived so much longer… and you just _had_ to come follow m-”

“I’m alive,” he says.

“Not if you’re with me,” Clarke says simply, and it hits her, how much more meaning that statement has.

“What were you thinking?” he asks again, and Clarke can hear his panicked sobs. “Were you _trying_ to get yourself killed-?”

Clarke turns her head, trying to get a vision of her surroundings.

She's on the beach.

Tendrils of her wet hair snake out around her head, and the pain in Clarke's arm from the rock returns.

"I'm alive," she says, but not as a question.

Bellamy sounds relieved when he breathes, "Yes."

Rage shoots through Clarke's veins, and despite the ache in her lungs from coughing out water, her eyes snap open and she lunges at Bellamy, her fist colliding with his jaw.

"Jesus, Clarke-" he gasps out, but he's silenced again with Clarke shoving him into the sand.

 _"You were supposed to let me go!"_ she yells, sitting on top of him, shaking his shoulders. "You were supposed to-"

Her hand comes back, and it sails towards Bellamy's face. He catches her fist just before it hits him in the cheekbone. They roll in the sand a bit, and Clarke ends up back on top of him, watching Bellamy's bottom lip bleed from a cut he got from a rock on the ground.

"What do you mean, let you go?" he asks, sounding unforgivably normal. Clarke wants to beat him into a bloody pulp for holding her back, for keeping her here, for making her  _suffer-_

She slaps him, not even feeling a drop of remorse.

Clarke catches a glimpse of herself reflected in the water; her hair, almost as long as the way it was when she first landed on Earth, glowing in the light of the moons, her face twisted with rage.

"What- do- you-  _fucking-_ want- from- me?" she asks, punching him in various areas with each word. She's not trying to inflict too much damage anymore, but she aims for his gut, his shoulder, his stomach, just wanting him to feel something. "You hate me and you insist that I stay here, be everyone's emotional punching bag?"

Bellamy's face twists with an emotion Clarke can't quite read.

"You don't need me," she says breathlessly. "I just wanted it to be over, Bellamy Blake. That's all I fucking want, and I can't even have that?"

Clarke has been silent too long.

This isn't who she is; she's not this deranged, this angry.

But she is now.

"Clarke," he murmurs, a rivulet of blood joining the droplets of water on his face.

She remembers something she wanted to forget long ago.

She remembers a lab, she remembers him saying her name, she remembers telling him to use his head, she remembers him telling her-

_I've got you for that._

Her fist whirls towards his jaw, but Bellamy grabs her arm, his hands sliding along the underside of it and he rolls, pinning her to the ground under him.

"I want you to be with me," he says, and his eyes are dark, an intensity shining from within that Clarke has rarely seen.

"You don't," she replies, trying to fight back a sudden sob.

He lost her long ago.

And that's the way it would have to be.

He loved her too early; she loved him too late.

And now there's nothing.

"I need you," he tells her.

She needs him, too.

But she needs to leave.

And besides, Bellamy just-

"You just say that," she snaps. "You don't want me around but you don't want me gone. You say that because you don't want  _another_ death on your conscience-"

"I say that because I can't lose you again!" he yells.

"You already did," she snarls.

And regardless of who moves first, he collides with her, his mouth slanting over hers in a kiss that burns like Praimfaya itself. Her hand slides into his hair, pulling at the wet curls, while her other hand cups his jaw. Her tongue darts out to soothe the cut on his lip, and he groans into her mouth, his arms tightening around her body.

It's wrong and it's right and it's wrong and it's right and it's wrong and it's right-

Her fingers go to the hem of his shirt. It's a cold night, and they'd just been in the ocean, but she knows that neither of them are feeling cold anymore. He pulls his shirt off in one swift motion, and the second that it takes, the second that his mouth isn't on hers is like pure agony. She grabs the back of his neck and yanks him down to her again, kissing him long and deep and hard.

They kiss like they used to live; relentlessly, angrily, both of them fighting for control. Clarke's leg slides along Bellamy's and wraps around his waist as he tears his lips away from hers and starts a persistent assault on her neck, her collarbones, lower, lower,  _lower._ He shoves the jacket off her shoulders and pulls her tank top off, his eyes darker than Clarke had ever seen them.

For a moment they just look at each other, and Clarke's mind softens for a moment, looking at Bellamy's features softly bathed in moonlight.

She opens her mouth to tell him that she loves him, but stops herself just in time.

And the blank rage returns, and she rolls so she's on top of him, and kisses him like it's the last kiss she'll ever get. A moan slips from her mouth as Bellamy's fingertips slowly run down her bare back, drawing patterns with the rivulets of water.

"Clarke," he gasps between kisses. 

"Shut up." Hands traveling over every line and edge of his torso, committing it all to memory.

But then she stops, realizing why he's saying her name.

"Echo," she says, leaning back. 

"No, god, Clarke, no. Echo and I... no."

Clarke lets out a humorless laugh. "Sure, Bellamy."

"It's always going to be you!" he snaps, then says it more gently. "It will  _always_ be you."

Clarke's fingers tighten on him.

"Echo knew that," he says. "And now I do, too."

Clarke shakes her head.

_Stop trying to scare me._

"I'm not just saying that, Clarke. It's the truth," he murmurs, and he just looks so,  _so,_ sad.

Clarke takes a deep breath. Then two. Then three.

"She did this to you, didn't she?" Bellamy says, his fingers coming up to caress the bruise on her face.

"It doesn't mat-"

"Yes, it does matter," he interrupts. "You matter."

A tear slips out of her eye. "I don't."

"You do," Bellamy murmurs. "They miss you.  _I_ miss you."

"You do?" she asks, her fingers ghosting over his face.

"I do," he says, and he sits up, his nose brushing hers.  _"I do."_

"There's nothing for me here," she whispers. "Not anymore."

He shakes his head. "There's me."

Clarke closes her eyes.

"You called me during Praimfaya," he states. Not a question.

"Madi told you?" Clarke asks.

"Yeah."

Clarke sighs.

"I talked to you, too," he says, and Clarke feels his fingers brush the curve of her body. "I sat there and I just talked to the window. Even when I thought..."

Clarke opens her eyes.

The stars and the glow of the ocean are reflected in his dark eyes.

"Kiss me," she commands, and he does, slowly and sweetly.

They just go slow after that.

Slow as he turns their bodies and gently lowers her to the ground, slow as he presses little kisses to her jaw, her neck, her heart, her stomach.

Slow as his hands and his lips glide over every curve and line of her, slow as everything else is removed, his hands slowly sliding into her hair to cradle her head.

He slides into her slowly, gentle but certain.

"Bellamy," she groans as their bodies start to move in sync. Clarke's heart starts to lift a little, starts to rise towards the stars.

She's sad, she's broken-

But maybe, just maybe, she's not alone.

They kiss desperately.

"I love you," he gasps against her lips. "I love you, I love you, I love you..."

He verbally tells her he loves her with every thrust of his body, every kiss he gives her.

And after Clarke's mind explodes into light, Bellamy's touch undoing her, she says it back.

"I love you," she breathes against his neck. 

"Now you love me?" he asks, a hint of a smirk on his features as he gently pulls out of her.

"I  _always_ loved you," she replies. "Always."

"Always," he agrees, lowering his head to kiss her again.

And after years and years of nothing, Clarke starts to hope a little.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah this was dark I'm sorry


End file.
